New Haven Fire Department plans to cut trucks if short on staff

Fire Department plans to cut trucks if short on staff

William Kaempffer, Register Staff

December 25, 2002

NEW HAVEN — Facing a steep budgetary dilemma, the Fire Department has instituted a cost-saving plan that will remove fire trucks from service on short-staffed days.

Despite dire union projections, the department command staff maintains the changes will have minimal impact on the safety of the public or its firefighters.

"Whenever you cut something, there is an impact," said Assistant Fire Chief Michael Grant. "The effects on the citizens and on ourselves is minimal, but there is an effect."

At the same time, he said, "this is short term."

The plan kicked in this weekend and city officials said they expected vehicles to sit idle for shifts through the end of the month during peak vacation time.

Union officials maintain that any parked fire trucks, even for one shift, amount to a dangerous game of Russian roulette. The union is currently engaged in collective bargaining with the city.

New Haven has been hit by the state with a mid-year budget cut of $1.6 million and Gov. John G. Rowland has recommended some $7.2 million more this year to deal with a $500 million state budget shortfall. Deeper cuts are anticipated for next year.

Firefighter Patrick Egan, the union president, claimed putting a price tag on public safety is reckless and blamed City Hall for driving the cuts.

"What you create is longer response times and longer response times are the difference between saving lives and losing lives," said Egan. "It’s apparent that he (Mayor John DeStefano Jr.) is willing to take that risk."

"It was the chief’s office who testified (before the Board of Aldermen) just over two years ago that we needed two more engine companies to ensure public safety." Here’s the personnel plan, according to fire and city officials:

On days with low staffing levels, rather than hire workers on overtime, the department will take a fire truck and/or an ambulance out of service on a rotating basis.

Three engine companies will be affected — Engine 4 based at Fire Headquarters at Grand Avenue; Engine 8 on Whitney Avenue and Engine 9 on Ellsworth Avenue. In addition, the department has taken one of two fire ambulances out of service on certain days.

Grant said the three engines were selected for tactical reasons.

Both Engine 9 and Engine 8 are stationed in firehouses with a second engine, so the stations remain staffed even when the truck is out of service. When Engine 4 is out of service, an engine will be transferred from Whitney Avenue for portions of the shift.

Any decision to park a truck will be assessed on a shift-by-shift basis, Grant said, and will be driven by staffing levels.

"This operation is not something we just pulled out of the sky," Grant said. "We’re not flying by the seat of out pants. This is well thought out."

In the department, 71 firefighters are required per shift to staff the department’s 12 fire engines, two paramedic units, ladder trucks and other vehicles.

When staffing levels fall below that figure, because of vacation, injuries or personnel booking off, the department must either hire replacements on overtime or take a truck out of service.

For more than a year, the Fire Department has been struggling with fiscal issues driven by skyrocketing overtime costs and cuts in funding. So far this year, the department already has expended its entire overtime budget with six months left in the fiscal year.

"The Fire Department has been dealing with a difficult fiscal situation for some time now," said Karen DuBois Walton, the city’s chief administrative officer. "Our ability to continue to cover overages in the Fire Department are really, really stretch at this point."

With peak vacation time between now and the new year, some days the department faced the prospect of hiring 12 people on overtime to reach basic staffing levels.

Rather than spend thousands at time-and-a-half, the department removed a fire truck and paramedic ambulance from service during three consecutive shifts this weekend.

"It would be (fiscally) irresponsible for us not to do anything at this point," said Assistant Fire Chief Ronald Dumas.

The moves eliminated the need for six overtime shifts per tour and saved close to $10,000.

Once vacations return to normal levels, officials said, removing trucks from service will happen only periodically.

In April, the department upset residents of Fair Haven Heights by taking Engine 17 out of service on several days for budgetary reasons. Two weeks later, amid threatened lawsuits and neighborhood protests, the city scrapped the plan.

William Kaempffer can be reached at wkaempffer@nhregister.com, or at 789-5727.